Ted Cruz slams Congress ‘trickery’

Sen. Ted Cruz thinks that Republicans’ “show vote” on the debt ceiling last week is the “sort of trickery” that has made Americans hate Congress.

“Republican leadership said, we want this to pass, but if every senator affirmatively consents to doing it on 51 votes, then we can all cast a vote ‘no’ and we can go home to our constituents and say we opposed it,” the Texas Republican said in an interview with CNN that aired Thursday morning. “And listen, that sort of show vote, that sort of trickery to the constituents is why Congress has a 13 percent approval rating.”

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“In my view, we need to be honest with our constituents. And last week, what it was all about was truth and transparency,” he added.

Cruz said he wasn’t trying to “throw five Republicans under the bus” by forcing them to vote for the debt ceiling, but rather he was hoping that all 45 Republican senators would unite against it.

“If 45 Republicans had stood together, nobody gets thrown under the bus. We actually just stand together and say, ‘What we say at home when we campaign we actually mean,’” he said. “The result would have been Harry Reid would have been stopped from raising the debt ceiling and we would have used it as leverage as we’ve done over and over and over again to force meaningful spending reform.”

Cruz was seeking a 60-vote threshold for passage of the debt ceiling increase.

In the same CNN interview, Cruz disagreed with Ted Nugent’s recent comments about President Barack Obama, but he didn’t rule out campaigning with him.

“You’ve never heard me say such a thing and nor would I,” Cruz said after watching a clip of Nugent calling Obama a “subhuman mongrel,” which Cruz said he had not seen before.

“I think it is a little curious that, uh, to, to be questioning political folks about rock stars. I’ve got to tell you, listen, I’m, I’m not cool enough to hang out with any rock stars. Jay-Z doesn’t come over to my house. I don’t hang out with Ted Nugent,” Cruz said.

When asked if he would campaign with Nugent, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott did this week, Cruz replied: “I haven’t yet, and I’m going to avoid engaging in hypotheticals.”

Cruz was also asked by CNN about his fellow freshman — and fellow rumored 2016 candidate — Sen. Rand Paul and comments the Kentucky Republican has made lately slamming former President Bill Clinton as a “predator” for his sexual history.

“I’m a lot less concerned with Bill Clinton’s escapades decades ago than I am with, with Hillary Clinton’s consistently wrong record when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to domestic policy,” Cruz said.

“The people who are getting hammered under the Obama economy, they’re young people, they’re Hispanics, they’re African-Americans, they’re single moms,” he said. “And throughout her tenure, Hillary Clinton has embraced the same far left agenda before ObamaCare, there was HillaryCare. And that agenda hurts people who are struggling.”